Flashback
by Tifaching
Summary: Dean thinks he's got something under his skin.  He needs Sam's help to get it out.   Hurt!Dean, awesome!Sam. Post hell issues, horror, disturbing imagery.


Written for the prompt: Dean or Sam. It starts as a tingle under the skin... I leave it up to whoever tries this prompt as to where it goes from there.

"It's not right, Sam. They can't get out. Please help them get out."

Dean's been mumbling this nonsense over and over from the back seat of the Impala and Sam has no fucking idea what he's talking about. The monster they'd been hunting tonight had been something new for Sam though from Dean's reaction to it, he'd definitely seen it before. And from the way Dean had gone dead white and frozen in place while the creature's claws came inches from disemboweling him, Sam was pretty sure he could guess where Dean knew it from. Consecrated silver rounds had dropped the beast, but not before it had made a pretty good start of peeling Dean's skin from the wounds the claws had opened.

"You have to finish, Sam. You have to finish so it can start. If you don't get this done it won't begin again and you can't leave me like this. They're under there, Sam, I can feel them. It hurts to finish and it hurts to start, but it's worse if you leave me in between. Please don't leave me in between!" Dean finishes on a scream and Sam pulls over to the side of the road and leans into the back seat. Dean is clawing at the bandages Sam had wrapped around his abdomen, his hands red with blood. "I can do it myself. You made me do it enough times. I can get it done."

"God, Dean, stop! Just fucking stop it would you?" Dean's hands still pull at his bandages and Sam grabs them and holds on tight. Dean has lost a lot of blood and from the way he's acting, there had to be some kind of hallucinogenic on those claws, but Sam has no idea what exactly its effects will be or how long they will last. He needs to get Dean somewhere to treat his wounds and he needs to call Bobby ASAP. But first he needs to find a way to keep Dean from ripping his bandages off and bleeding all over his baby. Dean will fucking kill him if he lets that happen.

Dean's blood slippery hands pull away from Sam's and begin to rub at his bare arms, digging into them with his nails. "I can feel them Sammy! Please, it didn't finish! Please, Sam!"

Sam just stares at his brother's face, wanting to look away but unable to. He's seen Dean in bad shape in a multitude of ways since his return from the pit, but this is the first time he's looked into Dean's eyes and seen hell staring back at him. "Okay," he replies in a shaking voice. "Okay, Dean, I'll finish. But we have to get back to the room, man, I can't do it here."

"Can't wait, Sammy. They can't get out. Can't get out." Dean's voice gets weaker as he goes on and his head falls against the seat as he loses consciousness. _Thank God, _Sam thinks as he guns the Impala for their hotel.

Dean's still out when they arrive and Sam drags him into their end unit under the cover of darkness. He lays Dean out on one of the beds and goes back out to grab the med kit from the Impala. The first thing he does on return is to start an IV in Dean's arm and start replacing some of the fluids his brother's lost. Dean hasn't regained consciousness, but he's twitching on the bed, rubbing himself against it in his sleep. Next he carefully removes the bandages from Dean's middle and cleans and sutures the cuts, carefully sewing muscle and then skin. As Sam finishes the last stitch, carefully tying and cutting the suture, Dean starts to come around. His hands immediately begin digging at his arms and he lifts his head to stare groggily at the long line of stitches stretching across his belly and his eyes widen in horror.

"No!" he yells, trying to sit up on the bed. "You did it backwards! Backwards, Sam!" His hand begin to scratch at the stitches, but Sam is ready. He injects a dose of Valium into Dean's IV and Dean's eyes lock on Sam's as he slips into a sedated sleep. Sam's own eyes burn at the hurt betrayal he sees in Dean's before they slide closed.

Sam wants nothing more than to sink into an exhausted sleep himself but he calls Bobby first. It's the middle of the night, but Bobby's used to them disturbing his rest. They have the special Winchester skill of not even having to be alive to do it. Bobby listens to Sam's description of the creature, of what it did to Dean and what Dean's going through now, and is silent for a moment. Sam's heart sinks as Bobby tells him he's never heard of anything like it, but he'll hit his books and get back to Sam when he finds something. His tone says that this is for _Dean _and he'll be damned if he doesn't find something to help the damned fool boy out. Bobby ends with a question that Sam's been wondering about himself.

"Sam," Bobby asks. "How sure are you that there isn't something in your brother now trying to get out? You say he seemed to know what it was. Maybe it's not just a hallucination."

"I don't know, Bobby. I hope to hell there isn't anything in there because I don't know how to get it out. It seemed like he was trying to tell me, but he wasn't making any sense. I'll try dousing him with holy water and using silver. Hell, I'll try everything we know, but I'll have to wait 'til he wakes up to know if it works. Let me know if you find anything on your end. Thanks Bobby."

Sam pours a little holy water into Dean's mouth and more along his suture line. There's no reaction, though Dean's hands are twitching even in unconsciousness. Next Sam makes a small cut along Dean's forearm with a silver knife. He chants and mixes herbs and when he's tried everything he knows, he sits down in a chair and watches Dean writhe and moan in his sleep. When he starts awake a few hours later, Dean is sitting naked on the bed, carefully picking out the last of Sam's stitches and pulling the wound back open.

Dean looks up at him as Sam surges up out of the chair. "Why are you leaving me in between Sammy? You know that's the worst. When it can't get out. Please. Let me fix it?" The pain and panic shaking Dean's voice stops Sam for a moment, then he falls on his brother, pinning Dean's hands to the bed. In Dean's weakened condition, Sam is able to hold him there while one hand gropes into the weapons bag by the bed and comes out with two pairs of handcuffs. He pulls Dean's arms up and out and cuffs each wrist to a bedpost. Dean's lying perfectly still now, his gaze still and watchful as Sam pulls ropes out of the bag and ties Dean's ankles to the posts at the bottom of the bed leaving him spread eagled across it.

"That's right, Sam. That's good. If you're going to do it you have to tie me up first, it's how it's done. I started for you, so you don't have to, but you have to finish. You did it backwards, but now it's okay. You just have to finish."

Dean's still staring at Sam expectantly and Sam really doesn't want to but he has to ask. "Finish what, Dean? Finish how?"

Dean's stare becomes angry and he pulls at the cuffs. "Finish _what_? Finish _how_, you fucker? You were there every time! You _always_ brought the fucking thing! You made _me_ do it most of the time and now you're making me tell you? Is that part of it now?" Dean shoots Sam a hesitant look and calms slightly like he sees something in Sam's face. "Okay. Okay, if it gets it done I'll say it." He gestures with his chin towards his newly gaping wound. "You have to finish opening it up. Take it all the way, Sam. They won't come through skin, not until everything else is gone. But if the skin's not there, they'll come out before there's nothing else left. You have to take the skin off, Sam. Then they'll come out and it'll be finished. And the skin always grows back. How could it start again if it didn't?"

Bile rises in Sam's throat and he swallows hard as he stares in horror at Dean's pale face. "Jesus Dean, you want me to fucking _skin_ you?"

Dean's screaming at him now. "If you were going to make me do it myself you wouldn't have tied me up! So either you're going to do it or you're going to leave me in between and let them eat me from the inside out. I can feel them getting stronger, like fucking electricity running under my skin. Soon they'll start and it'll be too late. Too late to let them out. Don't let them eat me again, Sam, please. Do you want me to beg? I'm fucking begging you!" Dean's sobbing now in terror and Sam sinks down on the bed beside him and cups his brother's chin in his hand, turning Dean to face him and staring straight into Dean's pleading, terrified eyes. He's going to need to put Dean under again soon, but right now he needs to get a few things straight.

"It wasn't me Dean. Whatever it was, just please believe that it was _never _me." Sam's hand slides around to the back of Dean's head and he strokes Dean's hair as his brother shakes his head and starts to speak in a voice so low Sam has to strain to hear.

"The first time you gave me the knife and told me to start peeling my skin off I laughed and told you to go fuck yourself. That nothing would be so bad that I would ever do something like that to myself. I learned better. You _taught _ me better. After that first time, whenever you would give me the choice, I always chose the knife. You always watched to make sure I did it right- nice and slow, not missing any spots. Eventually you got me enough practice that I could get it all off in one piece. It was hard to get my back, but you know how you can accomplish things in hell that aren't possible up here."

Sam's crying himself now at the thought of Dean going through that torture and having some demon with Sam's face be the one making him skin himself over and over until he actually got good at it. "No Dean, I don't know. I really don't." Dean looks at him doubtfully and keeps talking and Sam doesn't think he could get any more sickened than he already is by what Dean's told him, but as his brother's words keep coming, Sam has to clench his jaw harder to keep from vomiting all over the room. Dean's voice becomes softer and softer as he talks himself out and finally his eyes close and Sam can breathe again. He administers more sedative to Dean and restitches his abdomen, gently bandaging it after he's done. He stares at Dean, belatedly aware that his brother is naked and pulls the blanket from the other bed to lay over him. Dean is stretched across most of the bed, but Sam squeezes himself alongside his brother and goes to sleep with one arm across Dean's chest so he'll wake if Dean starts struggling against his bonds. Or, he tries not to think, if something starts eating its way out of his brother's body. It's not like he has a choice here. He can't skin his brother, no matter how many times Dean begs him to. It may have worked in hell but it sure won't work up here. Sam's stomach clenches in anger as he thinks of Dean and how bad the alternative must have been if he'd chosen to peel the skin from his own body over and over again. Everything Dean's told him runs in circles through his mind until he finally drops into a restless slumber.

When Sam wakes it's light in the room and his hip is vibrating. He rolls off the bed with a groan, noting that Dean is still out and still in one piece. He flips his phone open and talks quietly as he walks across the room.

"Hey, Bobby."

"Sam. How's your brother?"

"Still sleeping. He doesn't seem to be as twitchy so that's good, right? And nothing ate him alive overnight so I call it a good night. Find anything out about our creature?"

"I did. It's called a marlak. It's rare, not seen much anymore. Just you idjits luck to run into one. It's m.o. is to claw you up and then eat you alive and as far as I can tell, there's nothing on the claws either to inject something into you or to make you hallucinate that they did. I did find lore that it's a distant relative to another monster. One that's never been seen outside the pit except in old, old myth. That one's even more bad news. Sounds like just the kind of thing Dean was talking about last night."

"Okay." Sam fights to keep his voice steady. "Okay, Bobby, thanks. I'll call you when he wakes up." Sam hangs up the phone and his stomach finally does what it's been threatening to do all night so he runs to the bathroom and begins to heave into the toilet. The creature didn't do this to Dean. He had seen it and flashed back to hell. Sam's been begging his brother to talk to him-tell him what happened in the pit but he wishes he'd _never _found out about this. Sam vomits until his stomach is a knot of acid and he feels empty and hollowed out inside. He wonders if this is how Dean felt after having his insides eaten out, but he knows it's not even close.

He returns to the bedroom and sinks down into the chair beside the bed. Dean looks pale, but peaceful and when Sam checks his pulse it's steady. Sam wants Dean to wake up, but he never wants to see Dean looking at him like he did last night. Like he thinks that Sam could ever do that to him. It makes his heart hurt to think it, but he desperately hopes that the only hell he sees looking out of Dean's eyes is the one he's been living since he got out.

The end.


End file.
